Fordow. Tea Party with the Shadow

17 Mehr 1402 (October 9, 2023)

October in Isfahan felt like a prolonged farewell: the sky faded slowly, like an old photograph, and the evening air grew transparent and resonant, as if someone unseen had drained all the noise from the city, leaving only the echo. Autumn in the city always resembles an old woman who still remembers what a beauty she once was. The plane trees on Chaharbagh Avenue shed their leaves slowly, reluctantly, as if saying goodbye to each one individually.

Amirkhan Mousavi loved this time of year. In the twilight, the city seemed like a set for a play that had long been removed from the repertoire, and it was easier to breathe in this emptiness. Since Rustam Yezdi’s death, his own house had turned into the same kind of set. Zahra, his wife, had become like a locked room: the façade remained the same, but the windows were tightly curtained, and no one, not even he, knew if anyone still lived there. She moved through the rooms soundlessly, like a draft, and her silence was denser than the walls.

So now he was in no hurry to go home.

He sat at a rickety table at the street café “Hafez,” watching a slice of lemon float in a glass of tea—a small, shriveled sun in an amber universe. The table stood against the wall, under a canopy of grapevines that were already nearly bare. The tea was cooling, covered by a thin film of time. A little further away, two students were discussing something, waving their hands; opposite them, a man was reading a newspaper, folding it after each article as if sealing what he had read.

“Excuse me,” the voice was quiet but carried the habit of being heard. “Is this seat taken? It’s stuffy inside, and old age demands air, even if it is full of dust.”

Amirkhan looked up.

Before him stood an elderly man. Sixty, maybe a little older. In a dark gray suit that had seen better days but still held its shape. With a face where fatigue and sadness had been present for so long they had become character traits. He held a cup of coffee—an espresso, judging by the size—and looked at Amirkhan with that specific politeness that precedes an intrusion.

“Please,” Amirkhan said, sliding his tea slightly closer to the edge of the table.

The stranger sat down. He moved with the caution of a man who carries his body like a fragile vessel.

“Coffee,” he said, looking into the cup. “Doctors say I should quit. And smoking too. The heart, they say, is not a perpetual motion machine. But what do they know about the heart?” He chuckled sadly, pulling out a pack of Gitanes. “A man is the sum of his habits. Take away my coffee and tobacco, and what remains? A void in a gray suit.”

He lit a cigarette. The smoke was blue and acrid; it smelled of Paris, chestnuts, and other people’s secrets.

“You know,” the stranger continued, sipping his coffee, “there is a story about a man who spent his whole life watching others. And then discovered that he was being watched too. And he didn’t know who started first. It’s a very Persian story, isn’t it? A circle. Or a spiral.”

Amirkhan tensed. The hand holding the glass froze.

“Do we know each other?”

The stranger exhaled a stream of smoke toward the fading sky.

“Acquaintance is a convention. We know each other the way two pieces on a chessboard know their moves. We intersect but do not touch.”

He paused, flicking ash from his cigarette with the precision of a surgeon.

“Mr. Mousavi, we know that you organized the surveillance of Dr. Yezdi. We have all the evidence: orders, reports from your men, their routes. We know the dates. We know the names. It was good work. Methodical.”

Amirkhan felt the cold lurking in the autumn air seep under his shirt.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” the stranger objected softly. “This is the preamble. The plot begins now. On the night of the murder, your man, Reza Tabrizi, ceased surveillance exactly one hour before… the finale. He reported that he ‘lost the subject.’ What irony. And an hour later, Dr. Yezdi was found dead. Murdered. The official version—robbery.”

He paused, sipping his coffee as if savoring the bitterness of the moment.

“You are a professional, Mr. Mousavi. Do you believe in such coincidences? That the universe suddenly decided to play along with you with such frightening precision?”

Amirkhan was silent. Walls were crumbling inside his head. The tea in the glass now looked not like amber, but like last year’s straw.

“Are you accusing me?”

“God forbid. I am not a prosecutor. I am not claiming you gave the order. I am not claiming anything at all. But imagine how the people from the IRGC will read this story. They have no imagination, Mr. Mousavi, they only have instructions. Your man is tailing a nuclear physicist. Your man ‘accidentally’ disappears before the murder. And the motive? Oh, your motive is classic, Shakespearean. Jealousy. Doubts about your wife’s fidelity.”

The stranger leaned in slightly closer. His eyes were empty, like mirrors in an abandoned house.

“What chapter do you think they will write in your file? ‘Tragic Coincidence’? Or ‘Contract Killing Organized by Jealous Security Official’? It’s a ready-made script for a tribunal. And the finale there will be short.”

Amirkhan stared at the cooling tea.

“What do you want?” His voice, for a moment, became hoarse, alien.

“Me? I want harmony. You don’t need to become a spy. I don’t need centrifuge blueprints. I just need you to stay where you are. In your place. And if something truly important happens in the life of your wife, Dr. Mousavi… a change of rhythm, a new melody to listen to on the way to an urgent business trip… you will simply let us know. You will become our seismograph.”

The stranger pulled an old push-button phone from his pocket. A Nokia. A model they stopped making ten years ago.

“In exchange for this, all materials regarding your surveillance, all recordings, all reports will remain in a safe. In a very deep safe, the key to which only we possess. And the IRGC will never know how close they were to uncovering this… incident.”

He placed the phone on the table. Next to the cold tea.

“Just take it. The number is already inside. It is the only thread holding you above the abyss. If you agree, leave a message on the answering machine: ‘I need to service my car.’ You have a Dena Plus, right? Good car. Reliable.”

He stood up, carefully sliding back his chair.

“Think about it. Don’t answer now. We are in no hurry. Like Allah, we have our own sense of time… And in the future, if you notice something strange, say: ‘I have a flat tire—need to check.’ And we will contact you.”

He had already taken a step away but stopped, as if recalling a minor detail.

“Ah yes, Mr. Mousavi. It is unlikely your wife would be pleased if she found out you were having her followed. Women forgive murder, but they rarely forgive distrust. It is a paradox, but it is so.”

He dissolved into the evening air like the smoke from his cigarette.

Amirkhan remained alone. The city buzzed around him, but he heard only the beating of his own heart. He finished his tea. The cold, astringent taste of defeat. Then he slowly reached out and took the phone. It was heavy. Heavier than a piece of plastic should be.

He stood up, put a banknote on the table, and walked away. The air had grown colder. Leaves rustled underfoot like other people’s secrets.

He walked home slowly, taking his time. He knew that when he opened the door, Zahra would meet him with the same detached politeness one reserves for the postman. His daughters would be doing their homework. Zeynab—obediently, Nasrin—with a challenge in her eyes. Everything would be as usual.

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